A well-known US “televangelist”
(i.e. television preacher), who frequently appears on the Trinity Broadcasting
Network (TBN), recently promoted the compromise view known as the “gap
theory,” and did so by completely ignoring the meaning of original Hebrew text
in Genesis. (Because some in the Christian community are trying to correct
this brother, we will keep his identity hidden.)

The gap theory is an attempt by some Christians
to make Genesis fit a belief that the Earth is millions of years old.
They try to fit the so-called “geological ages” of millions
of years between the first two verses of Genesis 1 (although generally
they oppose “molecules-to-man evolution’).

The gap theory is an attempt by some Christians to make Genesis fit a belief that the Earth is millions of years old.

To support his view of the gap theory, this
televangelist cited Genesis 1:28
and the King James Version phrase “replenish the earth.”
He claimed that the word replenish here means “refill,” arguing
that before Adam, a group of people lived and died before the six days
of Creation (presumably perishing as a result of what some people have
called “Lucifer’s Flood’).

The word “replenish” in the King
James Version, however, was used in the seventeenth century (when the
King James Version was translated) to simply mean “fill.” According
to the Oxford English Dictionary, it did not mean “re-fill”
at the time the translators worked on the King James Bible. It was taken
to express such ideas as to stock, fill, supply, or inhabit. Note that
we don’t have “plenish” and “replenish” (like
“fill” and “refill”. “Replenish” comes from
the word “replete’; being “replete” with happiness
is being “full” with happiness.

The first use of the word replenish to mean
“to fill again” occurred in 1612, one year after the King James
Version was published. Furthermore, it was used in a poetic sense, and
certainly Genesis 1:28 is not poetry. The English word has changed meaning
over the centuries, so that the word replenish today could also mean “refill.”

The original Hebrew word for “replenish” in
Genesis 1:28 is male. This word simply means “fill,”
and is translated that way in the King James elsewhere (e.g. Genesis 1:22). So neither the Hebrew word nor the English word chosen by the
King James Version translators meant at that time “refill.”
The translators” choice of “replenish” may have been meant
to convey something “akin” to “fill up” (i.e. to “make
replete (full)”), but they were certainly not trying to convey anything
about another filling of the Earth. The linguist Dr Charles Taylor has
thoroughly analysed the Hebrew and English in What Does ‘Replenish the Earth’ Mean?, and shown that the “gap theory”
cannot be sustained.

Leaving the vocabulary aside, there is an important
Biblical doctrine at stake here. Those who hold to a gap theory do so
in order to accept the millions of years before Adam, and to explain the
fossils. These fossils, however, show overwhelming evidence of death,
disease, and suffering, which they would therefore have to put before
the Fall of Adam. (Many also believe that there were human-like creatures—‘hominids’—before
Adam.) As we have written about many times on this Web site, this makes
a mockery of the atonement message (i.e. Adam’s fall and need of
reconciliation with a holy God). (See The Necessity for Believing in Six Literal Days.)

The televangelist’s gaffe is a lesson
to us all to study to show ourselves approved unto God, workmen that need
not be ashamed, “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).